Rick’s recent post on blogs made me start thinking, how much do I really know about blogs? I mean I know what a blog is, but why do people write blogs? What motivates them? How do they obtain initial traffic and build upon it? How can they monetize their blog? And what the heck is a blog carnival? So I began to do some research.
What I do know is that people are social in nature for the most part and that blogging is the perfect format for expressing their opinions, sharing knowledge, stimulating and provoking thought, etc. However, I think what motivates people the most is their passion and it really doesn’t matter what the subject matter is, because generally speaking, if you have a particular interest, I would bet there are others that feel the same. Where there’s one, there’s another and another.
Obtaining a high amount of traffic is something that all Web sites strive for and there are many ways to gain traffic through SEO optimization, working with feed aggregators and a host of other methods. But, the most important thing is having good content and/or expertise in the subject matter. Why do good jokes spread so quickly around the Web? The main reason is because they’re probably very funny. The content was good, period.
I also found blog carnivals in my research. According to Wikipedia, blog carnivals aggregate posts by communities on a given topic and the host of the carnival provides a certain level of editing and annotation that helps readers find posts on blogs they are interested in. Then if the host finds the blog or post interesting, they can provide a link back to your post or blog site which of course builds traffic.
There are also many different ways to monetize your blog (assuming you have a Web site) through such Web 1.0 methods as banner advertising, affiliate marketing and selling items of interest. But we are firmly in the Web 2.0 world, and if your content is good, why not sell it? I am admittedly biased, but widgets such as Blog2Print are an excellent tool to have in your war chest to further monetize your content.
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